Soy un Jalapeño

Dear Boo,

I don't know if you've checked your calendar lately, but let me be the one to break the bad news. It's August 10th. TENTH! That's the first week of August! That means 21 days until September! Technically speaking, we have 42 days until the official end of summer, but come on. AUGUST TENTH!

Can you tell I'm freaking out?

As a preventative measure to stave off the pain of letting go, I am making a list of things I must do before Autumn is upon us. I know you might think this is a bit early to sound the alarms, but if I don't confront this thing head on, I'm likely to wake up tomorrow to find root vegetables and pumpkins have replaced the shock of red, orange and yellow blanketing the rows of stalls at the farmer's market. So here we go:

1. Eat tomatoes. Attempt to taste every variety available at the farmer's market. When possible, toss with olive oil, basil and salt. Maybe garlic if I'm feeling fancy.
2. Work on my freckles. I've got a good smattering going on my upper arms and the bridge of my nose (which, frankly, mostly makes my face look dirty) but there's a lot more area to cover.
3. See at least one outdoor movie, here or here, or even here.
4. Eat clams, as close to the ocean as possible.
5. Finish reading this book, as close to the ocean as possible.
6. Dance to live music, outdoors, as close to the ocean as possible.
7. Eat many ears of corn: raw, sauteed like this or this, tossed with mint/feta butter, mexican style, and in a pudding. (as close to the ocean--oh, let's just say this part applies to all.)
8. Squeeze in quality time with all the friends I disappear on during the busy school year.
9. Finish a Sunday NY Times crossword.
10. Drink wine with lunch.
11. Take copious naps.
12. Have a picnic on Governor's Island.
13. Use the student discount I have burning a whole in my pocket.
14. Sneak into a double feature on a really hot afternoon. Eat popcorn for lunch.
15. Make and eat more of these two (three) dishes...

Due to Trader Joe's (how I love thee) insistence that I must buy an entire box of jalapeño for a recipe that only called for one, I was left with an overabundance of peppers crowding my crisper drawer. Out of the file of "things taking up useless space in my brain" I pulled a recipe for Soy-Pickled Jalapenos that I had spotted in an issue of Bon Appetit with a feature on Korean food. Very simple, it basically required that I throw a bunch of things from my pantry into a pot and boil them. Done.

But now what?

Spicy, salty, and perfumed with lemon zest and the slight funk of the soy, these make a great condiment with infinite possibilities. Bon Appetit suggests serving them with their shrimp and scallion pancakes. Chef Josh suggested I use them in place of anything that calls for chiles, as it would add a salty complexity. He mentioned chopping it up with tomatoes and onion for a relish to top seafood or meat. I imagined throwing some into a pot of mussels for an asian-flavored broth with some heat. I bet they'd be fantastic with fried calamari, reminiscent of the Rhode Island style made with banana peppers. Or they'd work in any stirfry.

But instead I made this:
First, a vietnamese inspired noodle salad.

No recipe per se, just basic guidelines.
Throw into a bowl some sliced crunchy veggies (I used julienned cucumber, carrots, scallions and green cabbage, though bean sprouts, peppers, radish, kohlrabi would also work), rice noodles cooked according to the package and served at room temp (I used rice sticks because that's what I found, but rice vermicelli would be great too), sliced baked tofu (bought ready-made from Trader Joe's, but you could substitute chicken, shrimp, or steak, or pork). Top with chopped cilantro, mint, and basil (or any combo thereof), crushed peanuts, and soy-pickled jalapeños. Spoon a bit of the jalapeno liquid over the top, along with a generous amount of Nuoc Cham sauce. Squeeze lime, and serve. Perfect hot weather/lazy weeknight dinner.

And then, I made this:
Asianesque fish tacos.

Marinate your chosen fish (I used the cheap and tasteless tilapia) in some garlic, salt & pepper, and a few spoonfuls of the jalapeno liquid.
While it marinates, toss some green cabbage, scallions, and shredded carrots with a bit of leftover Nuoc Cham sauce.
Heat up some corn tortillas.
Cook the fish in a hot pan for about 5 minutes, flipping once.
Pile into tortilla and top with cabbage mixture, sour cream, chopped raw onion, cilantro, avocado, and soy-pickled jalapeño.
If you're the Boyfriend, top with additional hot sauce such as Srirachi.
Oh, the deliciousness.

So what do you think? Have I left anything off my list? Munch on these and get back to me.

Love,

The Mouse

Soy-Pickled Jalapeños
(lifted from Bon Appetit)

3 large fresh jalapeños (4 inches), sliced 1/8 inch thick
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup water
2 teaspoons grated lemon zest
2 teaspoons packed dark brown sugar

Combine all ingredients in a small heavy saucepan and bring to a boil.

Remove from heat and cool to room temperature, stirring occasionally. Marinate, chilled, at least 8 hours.

My New Favorite Thing

Dear Boo,

I think I first fell in love with beets back at Charlie Browns, when we'd go for dinner during a busy week of teaching, school, rehearsals, lacrosse practice, chorus or whatever else. My favorite, as long as I can remember, was the salad bar. An endless array of iceberg lettuce, shredded carrots, macaroni salad, black olives, sunflower seeds, cauliflower, croutons, breadsticks, jardinieira, spread out before me like a magic carpet, glittering with crushed ice and neon buckets of glossy dressing. I'm not sure what made me try the beets. Maybe it was mom's intense hatred of them. "They taste like DIRT! UCH!" I always had weird ways of rebelling. But it didn't take long for me to incorporate them into the salad rotation, smooth wet purple orbs atop a bed of iceberg, slathered in some kind of creamy italian. Boo: 'Creamy Italian' = Jersey. Even processed, canned, and sitting out for hours under a sneeze-guard, I could taste the earthiness, the sweetness. And in the days before makeup, they dyed my lips a beautiful bloody red, which no complimentary wet-nap could dull.

Now, beets are old news. How many countless goat cheese-walnut pairings have I had at how many countless neighborhood restaurants? But love them, I do. And while they've taken on the familiar and pleasant comfort of an old lover, like any long love affair, there are phases of renewed excitement where you see your love with new eyes. Right now is one of those times. It's a second honeymoon.


PICKLED BEETS. Not a new concept. But my passion for anything that sits in vinegar and sugar and salt for long enough to give that lovely salivating kick in the back of your throat, is powerful. Recently, I had some pickled beets made by our friend Chef Josh, who served them with....cottage cheese. Frankly I wasn't all that psyched about the pairing, but I trust Josh, and when a Chef is feeding you, you do what you're told. How glad am I that I did? The cream of the cheese cuts the sharpness of the beets and lends another layer of texture. Josh douses the pickled beets and onion (or shallots) with olive oil, salt and pepper, then spreads generous dollops of the cheese over the top, sprinkling it with more oil and fresh thyme. It's unbelievably good. I can eat bowl after bowl of the stuff.

I pickled some of my own the other day when I just HAD to have some. Three days later I'm already through half of each jar. It's lunch, dinner side dish, after-school snack, addictive. Trust me on this one.

Of course you can eat them straight or on salad, or with falafel or sausage, or a pork chop. But these days, for me, it's cottage cheese all the way.

Here's a link to Josh's recipe. I made mine slightly differently, influenced by Alton Brown's recipe, part as experiment, and part because I was out of a few ingredients. Both versions are delicious.

Pickled Beets with Cottage Cheese

8 medium beets, roasted (I used half golden and white beets, and half red)
1 small red onion (1 small yellow onion, if you're doing golden too)
2 Cups rice vinegar
1 Cup water (or a little more if you don't like it super vinegary)
1.5 tblespoons kosher salt
3/4 Cup of sugar

To roast beets: drizzle generously with vegetable oil, salt and pepper, wrap in tin foil and roast in oven at 400 for about 50 minutes depending on the size of the beets. While still warm, using a paper towel, rub skins off. They should come off easily.

Slice onion very thinly. Slice beets to about 1/4 in thick. Pack two jars with beets and onions, alternating. If you're using gold beets, keep them separate from the red ones or everything will just turn out red. Heat the rest of the ingredients until boiling and dissolved. Pour into jars over beets, leaving a small amount of space at the top, but letting bubbles escape. Wait 24 hours before tasting.

Drizzle beets and onions with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Pile cottage cheese on top, and add more oil and s&p to taste. Scatter fresh thyme over the top.

Love,
The Mouse

The Onions have Landed

Dear Boo,

I write to you from beneath an avalanche of onions. I've been living under here for a couple of weeks and have only now dug my way out of the kitchen for some fresh air. I can happily report that I have wrestled the bulbs into submission, with only a few tears shed, and emerged, ultimately, victorious.

Let me explain.

Sometime back in December, I attended a holiday benefit party for A Mac's fabulous theater company, ERS. There was drinking and snacking and music and around the room were tables with silent auction items tempting guests to bid. Amid the dresses and theater tickets and photo sessions, in a corner, tucked away, was an item that caught my eye. "Famous Sweet Jumbo Vidalia Onions" shipped to the winner by the mother of the Artistic Director, direct from Vidalia, GA, as soon as they come into season. On my second or third glass of mulled wine, I plunked my bid down. Next to me, A-Mac's dad laughed, "What the hell are you going to do with 50 POUNDS of onions?!" I looked closer. Whoops. "Winner is entitled to: Two 25-pound bags". What, Indeed.

Shortly after I was informed that I'd won the item, I got an email with the following:

"The onions are usually shipped sometime before the middle of May. The grower from whom we buy our onions does not rush his crop and they are usually really sweet. He lets them dry in the field after digging and before bagging and shipping. Hope you will be pleased."

And then I forgot entirely about them. Months passed and I received another email letting me know they had been shipped. My Super must have thought I was insane as he lugged the two 25 lb boxes upstairs, labeled "Onions". Wrapped in a bright mesh bag, marked with the official Georgia Sweet Onion Growers Association seal, direct from The McDonald Farm, standing on end the onions reached past my knees.
So what does one do when you find yourself buried under 50 lbs of sweet, milky white, voluptuous bulbs?

1) Eat one.
The first night we received the shipment, I sliced up thin rings of onion for a riff on a caprese with tomato, mozzarella, and basil. I noticed as I cut into the first one, how there was virtually no onion smell. I held the cross section up to my face, the milky juice running down my fingers, and took a breath. My eyes didn't even smart. We have a friend who used to eat onions like apples. I never understood how until I tasted one of these. They were so sweet, so crunchy, so utterly lacking in that tearful bite, that I could almost imagine packing one for breakfast.

2) Give some away, for the love of all things holy!
For the past couple of weeks, anyone who stopped by our apartment left with at least a couple. Onions are the new olive branch.

3) Pickle Some.
Great idea, Boo. I've always regarded anyone who does home pickling as somewhat of a magician, possessing skills I could never have. Turns out it's about the easiest thing in the world, made easier by this recipe for pickled onions I found from good old Martha Stewart. Despite my anxiety about having the precise alchemy, here's what I learned: Vinegar+sugar+salt+vegetable/fruit object=pickles. It's pretty simple. 48 hours later, we had lip-smacking, sour/sweet, salty onion pickles. Great on sandwiches, salads, burgers, hot dogs, or right out of the jar. (For the record, I ran out of white vinegar partway through and had to use some cider vinegar to replace it which worked just as well. I also added some pickling spice to the jars, which I didn't love. I think next time I'd just throw in a few peppercorns and be done with it.)

4) Make Jam.
Once I had bought the jars for pickling, jam seemed like the likely next step. Remember "Enjoy", the Stop and Shop label that mom found, which makes delicious balsamic onion jam that mom kept calling just "enjoy" for short--as in, "I put a couple of jars of enjoy in your suitcase," or "spread some enjoy on that cracker"? I set out to find a comparable recipe. What I found was one from your favorite, The Splendid Table. It was good, but not quite what I was looking for. More like a chutney or spread than a jam, it nevertheless would be delicious on chicken or fish, and makes for a tasty accompaniment to cheese and crackers. I'm not really a fan of the strong orange flavor the zest added, but that might have to do with the fact that I got distracted by Jeopardy and added it too late so it didn't get as much of a chance to mellow out.

5) Make Confit.
On my errand to Chelsea Market to buy some jars from the restaurant supply store, I ran into my high school friend Jake Dickson (supplier of Hamlet the Pig), whose company, Dickson's Farmstand Meats, is opening a butcher shop in the Market in the fall. In the meantime, they have a stand set up outside their future home, featuring a different farm each week. Over some steak, I told Jake about my onion conundrum, and he ventured the suggestion that I make onion confit. Basically, he said, you slice up a ton of onions, and sautee them for a reeeeally long time in a ton of butter over medium heat until it becomes a pile of caramel colored, soft sweet mess. Then you add a bottle of red wine and cook it down for a reeeeallly long time. It lasts forever, and tastes amazing on anything. Boy, was he right. The already sweet onions became practically candied with a lovely rose color and intense flavor. We had them on sausage sandwiches one night, then on the organic flatiron steaks I bought from Jake, the next night. It was incredible. The steakhouse-themed dinner I made featured onions in every dish--the Peter Luger salad of onions and tomatoes with Luger sauce, my faux-creamed spinach (with goat cheese and a splash of milk), and the hash browns.
My mouth is watering just remembering this. Lastly, yesterday I turned them into an onion dip similar to the kind you make with the lipton packet, but with confit onions, sour cream, lawry's season salt, and a dash of the Luger sauce.

6) Make Onion Soup.
As you know, we've been having awful weather. Rain every day, with temperatures ranging from low 60s, to 80s and back down to 50s at night, humid and horrid and altogether depressing. Lucky for me, this downer weather was perfect for soup. I'm sure if I were a self-respecting cook, I would have made this with homemade stock, but come on. I already had my hands full tackling an apartment full of onions. Gimme a break. Anyway, it was delicious, rivaling any diner version I've had in the late, drunken hours. I've frozen a batch for future days when the season of Vidalias is but a sweet memory.

7) Make more jam.
Emboldened by my pickle-making success, I decided it was time to take my home canning project one step further and actually attempt the whole sterilization/sealing process. There's a lot of scary stuff out there about Ph levels and botchulism that frankly I still don't fully understand, but the second bag of onions didn't seem to be getting any smaller, and though I hate to waste, I figured I could afford an experiment in my quest for homemade Enjoy (hopefully not a fatal one)...
The instructions that accompanied the two packets of pectin powder gave me shuddering flashbacks to honors chemistry. You'd think I was trying to build an atomic bomb, not make jam, for lord's sake. The result is fantastically tasty, if a tad bit shy of jam consistency. Enjoy! :) (For the record, I used 1 fewer cup of sugar because I ran out, and it was PLENTY sweet. I also used half light brown sugar for the same reason, and I substituted 1 t of dijon mustard for the ground mustard which I didn't have)

I have to say, I've done a lot of complaining, a lot of omg, please take some onions off my hands, over the past couple of weeks, but really, deep down in my heart, I've loved every second of the onion deluge. It's felt good to have a challenge, to research new recipes and techniques I might never have tried otherwise, and to come home every day, eager to get started on the next experiment. And truthfully, this is probably much like our eating and cooking life is supposed to be--cooking meals structured around the harvest, finding time-tested ways to preserve the bounty for the colder seasons, and spending quiet afternoons canning, sauces simmering on the stove, bell jars rocking gently in the boiling water, clinking against the sides of the pots, their lids sealing with a ping! from the other room.

I'll miss you, onions. Thank you for bringing some sweetness, spice, and excitement into my life. I only regret you had to travel so far to find me. But the lessons I've learned with you as my guide, I plan to bring with me next visit to the farmer's market. I see some pickled peppers, carrots, and snap peas, strawberry preserves, and fresh tomato sauce jarred for winter, in my near future. But you'll always have a special place in my recipe file.

Love,
The Mouse